After 25 years as a trial lawyer in Los Angeles, I made the nail-biting decision in 2006 to pursue my long-deferred dream of being a novelist. I spent the next two years writing a legal thriller, and, while that was collecting agent rejections, the following two years crafting a literary novel based on a true …

Actors use all kinds of exercises to help develop their characters for various roles. For example, actors create what they call a “morgue,” a large collection of photos of interesting-looking people, which they can refer to in establishing a character. Fiction writers can borrow these techniques from their actor counterparts. I’ve done so for years, …